THE INFLUENCER CLIFF HAS BEGUN

I think we're witnessing the rise of something I'm gonna call the influencer cliff, which is when fans or followers fall out of love with an internet figure they once held dear. This has to do with the fragility of parasocial relationships, but also the fact that influencer growth trajectories leave little room for anything aside from selling out. Basically a system where you're designed to take the bait and then record the entire dismantling for everyone's viewing pleasure. So these breakups tend to happen in two ways. One is a gradual uncoupling, but the other is sudden and intense as we saw in the case of brand flags or Victoria Paris at Coachella. And I recognise Coachella is now several weeks in the very distant past, but that festival is a pressure cooker for the unspoken contracts we hold with public figures and what happens when they break them. I came across this creator's video recently where she pulled her own followers and asked them what makes them stop liking a creator. And the No. 1 reason, unsurprisingly, is when their entire feed feels like a commercial. But No. 4 was also very much related when values don't align with actions. And this is a kind of half based theory at this point, but I feel like the influencer cliff often takes place at this juncture when creators try to move from a platform level sphere of influence to viable business in the outside world. We've seen this happen with Modern Girl bosses like Matilda Jerf and Alex Cooper as the business practices and working conditions inside their girl boss empires gets called into question. Because at that point they've ascended from relatable and scrappy to full on corporate entity with a team. And people just don't root for brands in the same way that they root for a person. Ironically, I think some public figures become entrepreneurs so that they don't have to do paid partnerships. They can just wrap their own brand as we saw with notable activations at Coachella like Kylie Jenner and 818 Tequila or Hailey Bieber and Rhode. Strangely enough, I feel parasocial sympathy for creators trying to make it in this age of algorithmic exposure when you can reconcile a favourable public image or become a profit machine but almost never at the same time.